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Ethical Theft ?

1 In 2002, 31% of consumers admitted stealing merchandise an average of eleven times per week (Levin 57). More disturbing, a survey of American adults revealed that 88% see nothing wrong with stealing (Levin 49). Although these respondents may be surprised to learn they answered this way, by endorsing online file-sharing, they inadvertently condoned theft. America’s continued use of music-downl...

Identity Theft

On February 7, 2005, the Federal Trade Commission reported that at least 10 million Americans are affected by identity (ID) theft each year[7]. The US Department of Justice defines identity theft as ”all types of crime in which someone wrongfully obtains and uses another person’s personal data in some way that involves fraud or deception, typically for economic gain[17].” ID thieves target any ...

Electricity and Gas Theft

Automated Identity Theft

89 otherwise shed light on their underground activities. In one recent case, honeynet intruders exposed the existence of automated tools that support and facilitate identity theft and credit-card fraud. Members of a community who call themselves carders use these tools to defraud Internet merchants and consumers of potentially large financial sums. The preceding installment of this department 1...

Theft and Taxes

This paper analyzes the interaction between corporate taxes and corporate governance. We show that the characteristics of a taxation system affect the extraction of private benefits by company insiders. A higher tax rate increases the amount of income insiders divert and thus worsens governance outcomes. In contrast, stronger tax enforcement reduces diversion and, in so doing, can raise the sto...

Credit and Identity Theft

The quintessential crime of the information age is identity theft, the malicious use of personal identifying data. In this paper we model “identity” and its use in credit transactions. Various types of identity theft occur in equilibrium, including “new account fraud,” “existing account fraud,” and “friendly fraud.” The equilibrium incidence of identity theft represents a tradeoff between a des...